What Do I Do if My Child is Addicted?

In this episode we explore what you should do if you think your child is addicted to their device or social media and we also have a special announcement for all of the DigitalParenting.com viewers.

Transcript

Hey guys and welcome to Digital Parenting Live for Friday June the 8th, where we answer the question that you guys have on how to keep technology from harming your family. Now, we have an exciting announcement that we’re going to be sharing in just a bit, but before we get there, let’s go ahead and take one of your questions like we always do. Here’s the question, “What do I do if really that that my teen is addicted to their device and to social media?” Again, great question. So many parents are struggling with this. And with all the data coming out telling us that yes, this addiction is real. Data telling us that when you remove social media from somebody that’s addicted, there are similar reactions to what you get from being in withdrawal from a drug.

Because of that, we have to look at this kind of dependency as something that’s real. And again, we’ll get into specifics about whether or not maybe it’s true addiction, but we know that these symptoms are real and so we have to help our kids get past this, if we find ourselves in this situation. To be honest, what we’re going to recommend here is what we would call our reactive path. Now, we’re still going to be sending out resources on how to deal with this specific situation, but in the meantime, to give you some highlights of that, one of the things that you need to do, as a parent, is you do need to figure out ways to basically remove some of this temptation from your kids.

See, ne of the problems is with any of us, when we use devices a lot is we instantly reach for those devices on a very regular basis. And so we need to create environments in our home where we know that again, we’re going to detox from devices. We’re not going to have that temptation. If you have a child that’s in that boat, create places where they can’t use devices and literally give them a detox. Start off with a period where they’re not on devices. Maybe that’s for a day or two for people that are really addicted. You’re going to see value and try to get your kid to go, potentially a whole week, without using a device. This is going to just help them begin to rewire their brains, so they’re not looking for that stimulus response every time they want to pull up their phone.

That’s going to be the first step. And then ongoing, from that point, you’re going to create times and you’re going to create places where no one in the family is using devices. One of the greatest ways that parents can help their kids is by modeling behavior around when they use devices and when they don’t. Having a day of the week, if you read for example Tech Wise Family, you’ll see that in that family one of things they did was on Sundays they went without devices. I think it’s great for parents to have those kind of boundaries in their home. But again, some of this is going to specific to your child, but we would say first, figure out a way to detox, spend time without devices at all, and then reset boundaries in your home with where and when people can use devices and model that properly as a parent.

And that’s how we deal with issues like this. This is how we coach parents to deal with it. And we think that’s going to work for you too. But, let’s get to the announcement that we have. We’ve been doing this show now, I believe this is our 12th episode in a row, so 12 weeks in a row we’ve been answering your questions, but we want to take this even further. Starting on Monday, July 9th, we’re going to be launching the Digital Parenting Podcast. Now, this feed is already out there. You can go to any app that you use to listen to podcasts, whether that’s Apple Podcasts or Downcast or if you’re on Google Play, any of these places you can go to, search for Digital Parenting Podcast and you’ll be able to subscribe to this podcast. And go ahead and do that today.

We did that so that you can be ready when we launch on July 9th to join with us. Each week we’re going to be breaking down a question like we always do, but we’re going to have a featured conversation. We’re going to be bringing in experts to give you some insight. In addition to that, we’re going to be reviewing a resource each week that’s going to help you in your digital parenting. And again, we’re going to do this on a weekly basis so that you have the information you need to keep technology from harming your family. But, thank you for joining us Digital Parenting Live on Friday June 8th.

2 Comments

I am appreciative of this blog, My question is do you know of any program that one can also participate in with their child to do a detox of electronics? It is so hard to get the right screentime as they now are using them in all schools.

I totally agree! It can be extremely difficult to manage this time effectively. We are working on a comprehensive Detox program for parents now, but until it is ready, you can leverage the Digital Detox from Covenant Eyes: http://learn.covenanteyes.com/digital-detox/